This might be a dumb question, but I browsed the site and it didn’t specify where you would be building sea steads. Will it be in tropical waters? Cold waters? There was a thread on tsunamis or something, but those are only deadly near land. I’m worried about hurricanes or tropical storms if the seasteads are going to be built in tropical waters. I know the seastead is heavy and stable, but can it handle like a hurricane hitting it?

I’m a little worried about employment opportunities while out in the seastead, but I guess I am majoring in earth and ocean science, so I’m better suited than many who would like to live in a seastead. I was thinking of geoengineering schemes to cut down emissions, reduce CO2 in the atmosophere, that sort of business, companies who have an emission limit imposed by a govt would have incentive to pay for a system to reduce their carbon, or at least reduce the carbon net total by buying such services. Well, how would this relate to the sea stead, well, some ideas involve altering the ocean. I like the iron dumping hypothesis where one would put powdered iron into iron deficient dead zones of the ocean catalyzing the production of phytoplankton. Phytoplankton produces 50% of the earth’s oxygen, so it would make sense to want more of that stuff. Also we wouldn’t be upsetting the ecosystem because all we’re doing is bringing life to dead zones in the ocean. Phytoplankton is at the bottom of the food chain, no other organism in the ocean can life without these guys. Ocean farming and other companies have implemented iron dumping in the past with good results, but now that company has turned to fish farming—-another possible good way to make money. Iron dumpying causes phytoplankton to grow, and fish rush to eat that stuff. So it’s an instant source of food for fish so we could farm fish easily. The trick is —to find the areas that are deficient of iron in the ocean and has all the other nutrients that plankton need. mostly, the oceans have what phytoplankton need, they just lack the iron.

Another possible money making scheme in the ocean is to mine black smokers. Several companies are looking into that now.

Location: could be anywhere really, but weather is one big thing to take into account, yes. No point in making things difficult for yourself by hanging out near hurricanes. Off the coast of SF seems like one likely place: the weather isnt bad, lots of economic activity nearby, and many seasteaders are from the SF area.

Im also a student, in engineering. As for ideas: as a matter of fact, the coming week ill be talking to people who are considering throwing money at me for a seasteading-symbiotic busines idea. Its still in a very early stage, but im excited about it. If all goes according to plan (probably not :)), ill be hiring people like you a year from now.

But if this doesnt work out: any engineering can be off-shored. All you need is a couple of engineers, and you have an engineering firm. The engineering itself doesnt have to have anything to do with seasteading, it could be software engineering, or anything. That would be my next bet for making money on the ocean.

Of course, outsourcing. That’s a smart idea, except I’m no business person. That’s a bit sad because that’s how you make money, you make others do the work I on the other hand, have to save money by living as a field geologist camping on the side of a mountain until I have enough in the bank to live off somewhere like a seastead to the end of my days doing something nonsensical like trying to solve the problem of induction. Oh well, at least I find the ideas about my future amusing.

I’m surprised no one attacked the iron dumping theory. I posted the idea somewhere on youtube and global warming crusader morons said a bunch of crap about it. They’re hell-bent on thinking global warming is doomsday and that the only solution is to ‘cut emissions’ in a world where the population is growing exponentially. Let’s see here, we want to cut emissions by 30%, while the population is growing by powers. Malthus is rolling in his grave. The fact that we live is polluting the world. Even if we were capable of cutting emissions by 30% off the total now, we’re still going to get a larger total. Cutting emissions = linear, population = exponential. Situation = fail. Of course this assumes everyone has the luxary of what we have now, I mean, we could increase population exponentially and have less pollution if people started living in some poverty stricken backwater type condition. Which is what some of these primitivists probably want.

Oh well, I started ranting, I might as well finish it. This global warming fiasco really burns my ass, I generally distrust what the govt endorses and well, they’ve been shoving this thing down our throats for a while now. I can discern propoganda from fact, and the fact is, the earth has been hotter in the last 1000 years. The fact that they think it’s ‘shocking’ and ‘doomsday’ is comical to me as an Earth scientist. http://longrangeweather.com/images/GTEMPS.gif

What is notable about global warming is the fact that the temperature rose really fast in the last 100 years, not that the temperature is really that hot. Also people don’t realize that the relationship between CO2 and higher temperature goes both ways, higher temperature causes greater CO2 output too. Some non govt funded scientists are also inclined to argue that it’s actually a higher temperature that causes increased CO2 (effect, not cause). Also this year, there have been record cold recorded due to ocean currents or a decrease in sunspots. My prof argued against my project implying that disappearing sunspots are the cause of this because temperatures in the upper atmosphere hasn’t decreased much I really liked that theory. At any rate, CO2 isn’t the biggest determinant of climate, like when a big weather system hits a hurricane, it just gets owned. Global warming has been owned by El Nino/La Nina ocean currents for the time being.

Now that we’ve bought our time, I get the whole ‘melting icecaps’ = bad thing, but could you just shut the fuck up and fix the problem instead of bitching about it. Honestly, just release the engineers. I personally think iron dumping is the best because it’s cheap as hell. But some people want to launch mirror-like particles up into space to deflect sunlight to cool the earth. You know, alot of things can be done, but geoengineering is considered ‘fringe and radical’. Well fuck you, you only want the scientists to talk when they follow your agendas. The moment you propose something that isn’t in the newspapers, people will think you’re a crackpot. Well, maybe I am a bit, but at least I can think for myself. They were freaked out by global cooling in the 70s, and now they’ve found a slightly more legitimate reason to tax us, but everything they say is designed to strike people with fear and guilt.

I as a non-scientist don’t know who to believe anymore. Both sides (“human-induced climate change” vs. “earth’s normal cyclic climate change”) accuse the other one of being wrong, and some cite fake studies or fake even their title to appear more legitimate. So I adapted a “I don’t care anymore” attitude.

As long as you don’t interfere with anybody’s life you are free to do whatever you want to do. At least this is my opinion, and luckily the one of TSI as well.

Iron dumping as a business could have potential. I will add it to the Wiki.

You’ve hit on several of the industries I have in mind for ocean colonization. OTEC can produce energy, along with nutrient rich seawater, refrigeration, concentrated brine, and fresh water as byproducts. The nutrients can feed aquaculture, enriched by chelated iron if needed, by supporting enhanced plankton and seaweed growth, for direct harvest and to support a food chain for fish and shellfish. Raw materials may be recovered from the concentrated brine with multistage filtration, electroplating, chemical extraction, and precipitation from evaporation. The uses for the fresh water and refrigeration are self evident. Mining the vent tubes and nodules on the floor are also options using ROVs.

I distrust and dislike the govt. I’m sure that the scientists supporting human induced warming has a good amount of evidence. I just really resent the political side of global warming and the induced ignorance of the general population to the relevant facts of the situation. I guess I never got over that doctored hockey stick graph. Al gore, getting a nobel prize, what kind of bullshit is that.

I´m no scientist either but in general terms, I think the CO2 frenzy is complete rubbish. Yes, it´s a greenhouse gas, so I´m sure the (very small) increase humanity has produced over the “natural” level, whatever that is, has some impact. But nobody can really tell for sure how big it is, or how much of the increase is due to other factors like changes in the sun (you know that great big yellow shiny thing in the sky that creates pretty much all of our climate) You can let computers simulate it but their results are only as good as the data you put into them, and nobody knows this data for sure.

So in the end it´s a matter of “maybe” CO2 will have bad consequences in the future. Or that we must ban something that “perhaps” will be damaging to the environment. And that is impossible if you are at all interested in progress and growth. Banning or taxing CO2 will have dire economical consequences because like it or not, fossil fuel is what drives the economy at the moment, due to its abundance and cheapness. Besides, as far as I know cold kills more people than heat, so increasing the global temperature will probably save lives, not take them. Sea level rise is not predicted to be very large even by the “consensus”, and that will happen so gradually (if at all) that people will have plenty of time to relocate. Besides, if you live near the ocean you are already (voluntarily) taking huge risks from completely proven natural disasters like hurricanes, earthquakes and tsunamis.

The most fundamental driver behind the current hysteria is the age-old desire of some human beings to control other human beings. When the climate change hype has faded in 10-20 years other theories will be invented for the same purpose.

Like I said I have no trainig in climate science so all the science above is as I understand it. The parts about human nature should be self-evident from history, no?

How much hot water do they produce, in general? How deep are they? Wikipedia says 2km or so. It seems like quite a challenge to put a power plant (or some extraction pipe that probably must be insulated) on that depth. On Iceland they produce lots of power from geothermal heat. Apparently it is economical there. Doing the same thing 2000m under the sea will probably be quite a bit more expensive. So if the price of electricity on Iceland is not significantly below the rest of the world I would guess it is unviable.

Climate science is another one of my pet research areas. To date, I have found the discussion that takes place at the ClimateAudit.Org blog to be the most useful. The stated purpose of the Climate Audit crew is to check over the published literature looking for mistakes. Alas, they have found plenty.

The short summary of what is going on is that the climate science crowd thinks that global temperature will go up by between 4 and 6 degrees Centigrade for each doubling of the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. Please note that, temperature goes up as the log of the CO2 concentration, since it takes double the amount of CO2 to get the same amount of linear temperature increase. From basic gas thermodynamics, the climate science crowd has a pretty good case for 1.2 degrees of increase per CO2 doubling. The remaining 3-5 degrees of increase come from a positive feedback theory where increased temperature from CO2 increases the amount of water vapor in the air which in turn absorbs more heat. The case for the positive feedback is based mostly on computer models and not actual measurements. The one paper I ran across that actually tried to measure the increase in water vapor as a result of temperature increase, found no such correlation. So, I’ll give the climate science crowd 1.2 degrees Centigrade per CO2 doubling, but I’m a quite bit more skeptical about 4-6 degrees Centigrade per CO2 doubling they are claiming. But who listens to me?

For me, there are plenty of other excellent reasons for reducing the amount of coal and oil we burn, but global warming is not one of them. I dislike burning oil because it causes large chunks of cash to be transfered to governments that I do not like (e.g. Saudi Arabia, Iran, Venezuela, Russia, etc.) I dislike burning coal because mining it is dirty (and dangerous) and burning it is equally dirty. But again, who listens to me?

Regarding storms and waves, it would make sense to choose locations that don’t have major storms or typically large waves. The ocean is a big place, so there are lots of appropriate places that don’t have big storms or waves to choose from.

Regarding global warming and needing enough energy for growing populations, some have argued that Carbon limits are effectively genocide against poor people in developing nations. There may be some truth to that. A more mild version is that it’s a way to prevent developing nations from developing further, i.e. economic frustration.

The other big problem with global warming is political: it’s an excuse to set up a world government with a world bureaucracy to tax and control energy usage. Large government bureaucracies are seldom friendly to freedom, and any sort of world government would by definition be enormous, even if it initially started small in scope, i.e., “only” to administer a world carbon tax.

Regarding solving global warming, Iron dumping is an interesting area of research. Apparently after large volcanic eruptions dump micronized Iron in the ocean, the earth cools due to the stimulation of phytoplankton. Experiments have been done to try this artificially.

Regarding energy usage, while oil is cheap, I favor renewable energy sources like solar, wind and wave, both for land and seasteads. Renewables are comparitively clean, elegant and friendly to the environment.

Tell me about it: since ive worked on gov. sponsored research, my opinion of peer review has declined rather steeply. Its great in theory, but in practice? Its more about who you know, and chanting the right mantra’s.

Me to my superior: so, what do we put in our conclusion?
him: Well, just write we met all our research goals, and how awesome our results are.
me: but we arnt even halfway there, and our results are mostly of the falsifying kind.
him: do you think anyone is actually going to read the entire report? just tell them what they want to hear.
me: uhm… ok.

Thats the thing with the hockey stick as well. Not that the result matters much either way, but it does show how broken peer review can be. Appearently you can simply be a dick and rudely decline any close scrunity of your work, and noone is going to call you out on it if they are ‘on your side’.

Its so utterly rediculous when people go on a rampage over an oil company spending a few millions on climate research. Not that i have any illusions as to their motivations, but its completely insignificant compared to the billions spent by governments around the world on AGW, under the biasing condition that there actually is a problem.

Yep, definitely, I’m not sure if it’s entirely active dishonesty, but more the idea that to the man with a hammer, everything is a nail. so they’re just gathering results that prove their theory without gathering results to form a theory. Poor way of doing science and at the same time, they’ve mixed these green moral ideas into the equation which of course worsens things.

The thing that pisses me off with the global warming is that you can’t merely disagree with the mainstream and be OK, you have to deal with all the morons shouting you down the street. Maybe it’s a general stupidity thing, “It must be true because everyone around me says it’s true becuase we all watch the same TV.” consensus reality = learned ignorance